Recent Stories with tag frederick zimmerman

Will it never end? This morning's New York Times brings news of the latest salvo in the long-running battle between the co-founders of the popular Baby Einstein series, William Clark and Julie Aigner-Clark, and the University of Washington. The Clarks are now suing the UW for records related to two studies in 2004 and 2007, where researchers Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis seemed to confirm that, as SunBreak photo editor James Callan put it in Seattlest at the time, the videos were nothing more than "21st century snake oil," with no demonstrable educational impact on children--while subjecting them to the potentially harmful effects of TV.

The Clarks sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company back in 2001, and at one point the brand was generating $200 million in sales and controlled 90 percent of the booming baby edutainment market. The problem was that for years, pediatricians had been discouraging parents from letting infants watch any television, to the point that in 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a formal recommendation that children under the age of two (Baby Einstein's target market) shouldn't be watching any television.... (more)